The personal blog of Peter Lee a.k.a. "China Hand"... Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel, and an open book to those who read. You are welcome to contact China Matters at the address chinamatters --a-- prlee.org or follow me on twitter @chinahand.

Sunday, May 15, 2016

Race, Clinton, Sanders, and "Fracture"

I recommend Sandernistas read Joy Reid’s Fracture for an understanding of some of
the passion and vitriol pervading the Democratic primaries.

Based on long and disapproving observation of Hillary
Clinton’s policies as Secretary of State, I am not a fan.She relies on the lazy conflation of
political advantage with national interest, and confounds frontrunning with
leadership.My opinion.So I find the efforts of POC Hillbots to
depict their candidate as the moral and spiritual heir of “The Obama Coalition”
borderline ludicrous.

But Reid’s book provides an important and sobering
perspective.

I hope I am not doing the argument of her book too much of a
disservice by encapsulating it as:

The devolution of the Republican Party’s “Southern Strategy”
into advocacy for a dwindling rump group of disgruntled whites relying on
obstruction and voter suppression to preserve its clout and interests has been
paralleled by the recognition by African Americans that only the Democratic
Party offers any genuine promise of protecting their rights, especially through
control of the executive branch at the national level.It is therefore a priority of activists to
leverage the solid African American voting bloc into acknowledgement by the
Democratic Party that the bloc is indispensable to Democratic electoral success
and should be accommodated accordingly.

Reid’s book came out too early to discuss the Clinton v.
Sanders rumble, but it is striking to read the account of the 2008
campaign.Clinton basically ran the same
crappy, calculating, over-programmed campaign in 2008 that she’s doing in 2016.The only difference today is that Clinton apparently
does not face the risk of her African American support evaporating against
Sanders, as it did when she ran against Obama in 2008.

Sanders is manifestly uninterested in soliciting African
American votes as a bloc.He’s running a
class-based campaign where the “working class” regardless of color & creed
are expected to unite and stick it to the bosses.In his approach, Sanders resembles his hero
Eugene Debs, who did the socialist thing, and dismissed racism as a distraction
employed by capitalism to split and befuddle the working class.

Sanders’ apparent disinterest in racial issues except as a
subset of economic issues drives pro-Hillary African American activists
nuts.The result has not only been accusations
that Sanders is blind on racial issues, not inaccurate in my opinion, but also
that he’s racist (more of a stretch but, considering his interest in attracting
the disgruntled white vote at the expense of overt solidarity with black voters,
not completely unfair).Less
convincingly, I’ve seen efforts to try to turn Sanders’ interest in economic
equality as a mark against him, along the “communist tyranny” line.

The business-friendly explanation advanced by pro-HRC POC activists is that the way to address
African American economic inequality is by going after racism, not by seeking
to lessen economic inequality for all Americans.

Consider me unsold, given my perception of self-perpetuating
systemic problems in US society that are brought on by globalization and the
tilt toward interests of the well-off.The
house is on fire, in other words, and fighting for more black firemen is not
going to fix the problem.

Then again, African American activists might say, Sheesh, another excuse not to hire black firemen. Excuse me, that fire's been burning for decades in POC neighborhoods. Maybe getting more black firemen into the game would help.

My takeaway from Reid’s book is that theoretical
consistency is, well, a luxury—privilege is the current mot juste—for white theorists.Another way to put it is that the critique of some Sanders supporters
may be pretty solipsistic: deep and ongoing problems in American society were
only deemed a crisis when whites started to feel like they’re getting fu*cked; once
the economy is rebalanced to make white people feel better, nobody’s going to
care about the people of color who were f*cked and will continue to get f*cked.

African American activists see a different socio-political
landscape, not a gradual, dispiriting decline, but a roller coaster from the
highs of Clinton and Obama with the depths of George W. Bush in between…and the
prospect if the deepest dip ever if Donald Trump becomes president.Reid’s book goes back five decades to
describe the long, arduous struggle of black activists and candidates to gain
recognition and clout inside the Democratic Party, culminating in the
unexpected and thrilling triumph of Barack Obama’s victory.

President Obama’s presidency—and the racist attacks he
endured despite playing the inevitable role of white-pleasing supermoderate—gave
African American voters an unprecedented feeling of pride, unity, and
empowerment that caused them to vote Democratic not only in their traditionally
high percentages but also in unprecedentedly high numbers.And the decay of conservative white voting
power to the point that it could be overwhelmed by a coalition of 40% of whites
and 90% of blacks in which the African American vote was viewed as decisive
provided a sense of leverage, of mission, that African American activists are
loathe to abandon.

Unfortunately, the “indispensable black bloc” narrative
works best in Democratic primaries in southern states, a fact to be celebrated
by exponents of the invincible Obama coalition theory, and scorned if cited by
Sanders as evidence of the limits of black political power.

The Republican Party has marginalized itself to the point
that it is not a plausible home for African American voters.Sanders is, perhaps, cynically banking on
this fact, and assuming he doesn’t need to cater to the African American vote
in the primaries; if he wins the nomination and moves on to the general, the
black vote will come to him by default.

“Taking the black vote for granted” gives activists
conniptions and necessitates a lot of huffing and puffing and indignation to
demonstrate that Sanders, even if he was running against Trump, is a racist
communist so vile he could not bring in the African American vote in sufficient
numbers to win.

It also requires over-the-top adulation of Hillary Clinton,
the candidate who lost the African American vote in 2008 in a rather clumsy and
nasty campaign against Barack Obama, and who, judging by President Obama’s
subtly telegraphed disdain for her legacy as Secretary of State in the Middle
East and North Africa, is not anywhere near the natural “heir to the Obama
coalition”.

To me, the energy and credibility expended by African
American political activists in trying to drag Hillary Clinton across the
finish line are indicative of the importance of the narrative and not the
quality of the candidate.

In African American calculations, perhaps Hillary Clinton is
just a place-holder: the one candidate, despite her shortcomings, ready to
solicit the African American bloc in 2016 and who needs to be rewarded by
delivering that bloc big time.Otherwise, the decisive importance and free agency of the black vote is
undercut, and people will relegate the black vote to the unimportant category
again.

I’m betting the real game will be in 2024, assuming Clinton
gets two terms.By that time, perhaps
the Democratic Party will produce another Obama, an African American candidate
whose loyalty to the vision of improving black lives can be assumed and not
asserted, advances the narrative that racism must be addressed in the pursuit for economic justice for all, and places the African American vote unambiguously at the heart of
the Democratic strategy.

I’m betting that 2024 candidate is Kamala Harris.

But the question is whether the political environment in
2024 will present the same picture as 2016: a thoroughly self-marginalized
Republican Party confronted by an ascendant Democratic Party in which a
monolithic African American bloc can plausibly claim a decisive role during the
primary season.

If the disintegration of the Republican Party and the
transformation of the Democratic Party into pro-business Republican-lite
continue, a party wing or even a third party might emerge that campaigns on the
theme of across-the-board economic justice and lays claim to its piece of the
African American vote.

African American voting power may have peaked under
President Obama.It might turn out to be
a wasting asset, which might be one reason why activists are so keen to bring
it into play in this election before their votes are once again taken for
granted and their interests subordinated to other, more pressing priorities.

6 comments:

Obama presided over a major decline in the wealth of US Black and Hispanic households as compared to US White households. Has he even lifted a finger to help other Blacks? I'd say he has taken the Black vote completely for granted, and that his Democratic successors will do the same, at least until some other party arises that Blacks could conceivably vote for instead of the Democrats.